NASA STEREO Spacecraft Set to Launch 82
An anonymous reader writes "As first reported on last year, NASA's
STEREO mission is set to launch tonight at 8:38pm EST. The two near-identical spacecraft will give us unprecedented stereoscopic views of the Sun-Earth system, hopefully leading to the creation of the first
3-D movies of the Sun! Launch can be watched live on
NASA TV with coverage starting at 6:30pm EST."
No one has seen the sun in 3D before? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh! My eyes! Well, so much for that...
Re:No one has seen the sun in 3D before? (Score:5, Funny)
>
> funny but you do know that stereoscopic vision does not work for things as far away as the Sun? There is like a 30m max for that.
He's right. I tried switching between my left eye and my right eye to see if I could spot the parallax difference, and I couldn't see a goddamn thing after ten minutes, never mind 30 minutes.
Nothing to see here, guess I'll move along.
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Nice, then all we must do is to place the spaceship at 30m from the sun and take a photo.
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I thought that when I look at the sun, since I see it with two eyes, I see it in 3D.
Your eyes only allow you to see details on the Sun bigger than 20,000 kilometers. Since the parallax between your two eyes is considerably less than that, your eyes only allow you to see the exact same image of the sun, and thus you see the sun as if it was in 2D.
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Sound in space (Score:2, Funny)
NASA pushing the frontiers???? (Score:2)
A Space Stereo? (Score:5, Funny)
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Not yet, but wait till after we secure an orbit for those babies!
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Actually, space sound is so quiet that you won't be able to measure it using common microphones because of very low matter density and very large wave lengths.
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Steve Martin says (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)
Well, there's always Uranus. (Score:1)
Wait...it's not for making pornography?
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it IS research (Score:3, Insightful)
You ask how the 3d view of the sun could be used in further research, implicitly in the pursuit of space colonization. Well, seeing as the sun is a pretty [wikipedia.org] big [wikipedia.org] deal [wikipedia.org] in our solar system (I mean, it's the solar system), I think all of humanity would really benefit from understanding how and why it does the things it does.
In relation to space colonization, the radiation given off by the sun (and other celestial bodies) is o
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Not to mention, if you're talking propulsion like the previous poster, it's important to consider that the Sun is a damned-near eternal source of stable, reliable energy driven by fusion on a massive scale. If we want to explore even just a little ways outside of our own
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You have obviously been spendig too much time drinking the scifi cool-aid and not enough time logically thinking things through. And yes, I am a scientist (physicist).
Oh AC, your false pretenses always astound me. Are we really to believe that this quote-unquote "physicist" doesn't know how to spell "kool-aid"!?
Ha! Some physicist...
Re:While it is great... (Score:5, Informative)
Here [nasa.gov] is some very relevant information on the science instraments attached to the STEREO probe.
You'll notice that each of the vehicle's instruments has it's own page, and some pretty good information on what it is supposed to do and why. It sounds pretty relevent to me. NASA's website is pretty great actually. You paid for it, go check it out.
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http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stereo/mission/
http://secchi.nrl.navy.mil/ [navy.mil]
For example, this mission could be important for understanding how to protect humans out in the solar system.
Re:While it is great... (Score:4, Interesting)
Let me try and remember what the numbers meant;
7 - was the tons of helium converted (burned) into hydrogen every second.
4 was the 4 reasons why we care; 1) solar winds and how it effects things/us 2) communications and how it was affected 3) was the impact on astronauts (and thus your point about colonization) 4) was the affect on airplanes in our atmosphere (apparently an issue large enough to currently cause restriction of flights near the poles)
2 was for stereo views
He said there is a need to better understand how the sun affects us currently and for future space travel and these experiments will help in that understanding.
For the paranoid types, the air force is also involved in the project - one can only guess how 'stereo' eyes in orbit can be tested and developed as new surveillance technologies.
Re:While it is great... (Score:4, Interesting)
For reference, the fusion works the other way: hydrogen is fused to produce helium. I'm also pretty certain that the sun fuses a LOT more than 7 tons of hydrogen every second. Wikipedia claims [wikipedia.org] it's 3.6e38 protons a second, which my back of the envelope calculation (3.6e38 / 6.02e23) says is basically 6e14 grams, or six hundred million metric tonnes per second, most of which becomes helium... there's some other fusion reactions that make traces of heavier elements, and some of that mass is converted into energy.
My favorite stat is that 99% of the mass of the solar system is the Sun, with the other 1% being Jupiter. Our wonderful planet, with all it's enormity and majesty, and all most of us will ever know personally, is lost in the underflow of the total mass. :-)
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I think you mean immensity, not enormity. [thefreedictionary.com]
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True. It was late, and I was lucky to even be able to do the math. :-)
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It's been 37 years since i took an astronomy class, but I seem to remember the sun converted helium to hydrogen on the inside, then turned hydrogen back into helium on the outside. But, like I said, it's been a long time and it's definitely not my field of science
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Actually... We're not even that good right now (Score:2)
With a single point of observation that's not in the path, you can tell it's moving to the left or right -- but you still don't know how close it is, so although you can tell how quickly it's moving across your field of view, yo
Logical thinking is great, but ... (Score:2)
First, NASA has different classes of missions, such as the Discovery Programs [wikipedia.org], which are intended to be lower cost, and more science focused. (I think STEREO falls under this, but I'm not sure). The cost is claimed to be $500mil [nasa.gov], not the 'billions' that you claimed. Yes, it's still a lot, but not all of it comes from the US [space.com].
As for the 'movie' aspect -- the satellites will be able to generate 3D movies, but it's not what
Gigantic 3D glasses being erected in desert . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
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Funky fictional anecdote.
Olaf Stapledon's science fiction "novel" (more like a future history) Last and First Men covers the evolution of humanity from us poor demi-apes to a hyper-evolved species living on a terraformed Neptune two billion years from now.
These "last men" are not only telepathic (and have 96 genders and look like anthropomorphic animals), but they can communicate with themselves across time.
Stapledon describes the "last men" astronomers staring at the sky, sending a telepathic impression of the sight one-half of a Neptune year in the future, where their future selves integrate it with their own observation of the sky to create a wide-baseline 3D parallax image of the heavens.
No. I don't know what Stapledon smoked.
Stefan
Re:Gigantic 3D glasses being erected in desert . . (Score:1)
My eyes got stuck that way. Sigh. Mom warned me...
Re:Gigantic 3D glasses being erected in desert . . (Score:1)
0_0
..think of their Myspace profiles. I can't picture it. What happened to the 2 item combo box, you know? Does having more 7 dicks make you more macho than if you had 5? And what happens when you get a mix up with 10 pussies and only 8 dicks? Or do they use telepathy to avoid this kind of situation?
96 genders, eh? He was definitely on crack. Just because they get 512-bit address spaces doesn't mean you get to have more genders. I mean, dude
S
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Nearly identical? (Score:5, Funny)
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Now, as one is to the effective 'right' of the earth (Ahead), and one effectively 'left' (Behind), I don't know if the instruments are placed differently in relation to the antenna to communicate w/ earth, or if they just have one flipped over.
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I can't wait to see the Sun in 3D (Score:2, Funny)
I can literally feel the vitamin D oozing from my pores, all I need now is a virtual sun burn.
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Launch time... (Score:2, Informative)
mplayer link (Score:2)
3-D movies? (Score:2)
Let's stick with other fancy acronyms for this thing. HDR's a good choice... it'll be blindingly good. *rimshot*
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planned holds (Score:2, Insightful)
Here I am, minutes before I have to head out to work listening to the webcast and being happy that the T minus time for launch is less than my T minus time for work. Then their talking head mentions being a couple minutes away from a planned twenty minute hold. If they are planning on pausing for twenty minutes, why not just add twenty minutes to the clock and keep it counting?
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There isn't much information on the NASA website about built-in holds (that I could find) but a bit of an explanation can be found here: Countdown Clock & Time to Liftoff [nasa.gov]
"Sometime built-in holds are included to allow synchronization with other countdown clocks (for example, a payload countdown). Other built-in holds allow people to take a break. The built-in holds vary significantly from day-launch missions to night-launch missions."
"The shuttle countdown clock typically starts counting at about 43
Allow for Checks (Score:2, Informative)
At the end of holds often comes the "Go, no-go" sequence immortalized by Apollo 13. Or at least an implicit "Go, no-go" indication.
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I can't find any webpages that explain this explicitly, but looking at NASA's Countdown 101 [nasa.gov], this explanation seems to make sense.
Re:planned holds (Score:5, Informative)
From http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/podcasting/115_ask
"Barrett: Why are there holds in the countdown and what is happening in the firing room during those holds?
Leinbach: Well the holds were put in -- designed in the countdowns from the very beginning of the manned spaceflight program. And they are intended to be points in the countdown where the team can take a breather, essentially. There's not supposed to be much work going on during a hold. Again, it's a point where if work leading up to that built-in hold has run behind schedule for some reason, we can continue to work into the hold and then take the hold itself and then when we pick up the clock again, get back into work. So, really they are points in the timeline that allow catch-up time and also time for the team to take a breather and think about what's coming up next in the count. The last built-in hold we have is at T minus 9 minutes and for the current missions those are 40 minute long holds so that we can make sure that the vehicle is ready to pick up the clock at T minus 9 minutes and counting, because for 9 minutes on down is when the vehicle really starts to come to life. And so we want the team to be focused having just taken a short break as it were. We don't leave the control room, but we look forward to what's about to happen and we concentrate on our jobs. And so, it's really a time of reflection. It's a time to catch your breath and to think about what we're about to go do."
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Think anyone has panicked and screamed "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!"?
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Better quality? (Score:2)
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Obligatory (Score:1)
It launched, nicely (Score:1)
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Excellent launch (Score:2)
Stick it to the man (Score:1)
Typical NASA behind the times (Score:1)
GoreSat, anyone? (Score:1)